


Lions Make You Brave

by skyline



Series: Stardust [8]
Category: Big Time Rush (TV)
Genre: District Thirteen Wedding, Hunger Games AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-14
Updated: 2016-03-14
Packaged: 2018-05-26 15:10:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6244672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyline/pseuds/skyline
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The world is beautiful and terrible. Don’t be afraid.</p>
<p>That’s a thing James read in a book one time, paraphrased and worn down by the slow passage of seasons.</p>
<p>He didn’t think much of it, before the Games. But now, the words resonate in his bones every moment that he manages a glimpse outside of District Thirteen’s concrete walls.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lions Make You Brave

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Breila_rose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Breila_rose/gifts).



> This is the last of the Finnick/Annie stories I’m writing. It’s been – a lot more than I thought I’d write, honestly. But those of you have chosen to read are sports, okay. I really appreciate it. 
> 
> Things: I know in other hunger games verses I’ve done, Logan is Katniss. I’m sure I had a reason for choosing that, but it occurred to me that at least here, Logan is totally Peeta. Carlos would be like man, Capitol, try brainwashing me more, this is fun. 
> 
> More things: The quote at the beginning is a- actualfax paraphrased, and stolen from Frederick Buechner. Who I’ve never actually read – it was on a meme a guy I was dating sent me when we were in the midst of breaking up. He’s an ass of the highest order, clearly…but I liked the quote.
> 
> Last things: This is for Pepper, because she was this verse's biggest fan. I'm sure at one point I met this to be long and drawn out and have a lovely ceremony and some kind of fancy language that emulated the last few - but I kind of think this is better. And never forget, you're the best. <3

The world is beautiful and terrible. Don’t be afraid.

That’s a thing James read in a book one time, paraphrased and worn down by the slow passage of seasons.

He didn’t think much of it, before the Games. But now, the words resonate in his bones every moment that he manages a glimpse outside of District Thirteen’s concrete walls.

His world is made of brick and mortar, the damp, mossy smell of mold and the sleek, future-tech of the Capitol combined into one huge, claustrophobic bunker. It’s nothing like District Four, too far from the scent of briny sea, but it is something else. Something vaguely resembling _safe_.

James can’t remember the last time he wasn’t scared, for himself, or his family, or Kendall.

Kendall, who walked in and out of the Capitol like he was born to play spy games, like fear was not a word that he had ever heard of.

Kendall, who was the only thing he could think of those weeks that the Capitol held him captive.

They tried to torture information out of James, to turn him to their side.

They did not try too hard. James is a toy they’ve already broken. They didn’t think anyone would trust him with a single useful piece of information.

And they were right.

James knew that too, while he listened to the screams of that poor boy from District Twelve in the next room, the one they call Logan. He knew that Kendall could have told him the plan; could have told him everything, and the Capitol would never have known. They would never have truly tried to wrest a single word from his crazed, manic lips.

But Kendall did not tell him the plan.

James has wasted too many hours wondering why.

Why he had to watch the man he loves venture into the arena a second time, tortured by James’s own cries from Capitol mutts. Why he insists on loving someone who approaches death with a devil-may-care smirk again and again and again.

Why, when Kendall was supposed to be saved from the arena, James hadn’t known it was coming.

When the Quell started, James had numbly remembered the last time he’d suffered through this fate, surrounded by the crash of waves and the acrid burn of engine oil on his tongue. He was a different person, back then, confident that Kendall would win.

Confident that the Hunger Games could be won.

Now he’s come out the other side. He knows that there is nothing like victory to be found in the Capitol’s torture. There are only survivors, and James feared Kendall – his Kendall – wouldn’t survive the Quarter Quell.

He did. He did because he never planned on playing, not to the end, and James didn’t know that. As the guards in the Capitol wrested his arms behind his back, pushing his face into the cold, tiled floor, all James could think is how they’d get nothing from.

He didn’t _know_ anything.

Now he’s clear and he’s safe from the Capitol’s grasp, and one other thing too:

He’s so fucking pissed.

“You’re a dick,” he tells Kendall, for the nineteenth time that day.

“I’ll alert the media. Maybe they can stick that in a propo,” Kendall snarks back, snatching something round and pea-shaped from James’s rations.

“It’s like you’re actually enjoying me being mad.”

Kendall catches his hand, mouth hanging open mid-chew. “I’m enjoying the part where you’re alive and well and here. We both are.”

“You did good,” James admits, still simmering. “That doesn’t mean I forgive you.”

“I can think of a way that you might.”

James shakes his head. Sex is not going to get Kendall out of this one, not after how he’s worried and fretted. Not after how fucking scared he was.

He glowers and glares and tells Kendall, “I beg to differ.”

“You haven’t even heard the plan.”

“Exactly, that’s the problem.”

“Not that plan. This plan. My new, talk-you-into-forgiving-me plan.” Kendall’s expression is hopeful, practiced and light.

James hates that, hates that Kendall thinks he’s always so clever, that he can fix everything.

(He loves it too, because Kendall is always so clever, and he can fix things, mostly, if they’re not too far gone.)

“It won’t work.”

“You don’t know that.” Kendall squeezes James’s hand, and then both of them, his fingers wrapping around James’s wrists. “Come on, honey, baby. Look at me.”

“Stop it.” James swats Kendall’s hands away, the nicknames prickling along his spine. “You’re making fun of me.”

“That’s not what I’m doing at all.” Kendall tilts his head, green eyes flashing. Then he reconsiders. “Maybe a little.”

“So what are you doing?” James demands.

He waits for a joke, for something light and trivial to fall from the Capitol Whore’s lips, because that’s who Kendall is, even now. Even in the midst of District Thirteen, he’s _on_ , like there might be cameras watching from hidden angles.

Only, Kendall flicks his eyes closed and takes a breath, the faked endearments falling away.

He sucks in a breath, in _out_ , in _out_ , and then he confesses, “I was hoping you would marry me.”

James tells him, “If that’s a joke, it’s not a good one,” his heart beating so hard that it is thunder in his ears.

James asks, “It’s not a joke, is it?”

Kendall doesn’t say anything to defend himself. He grabs for James’s hands again, lacing their fingers together, and James, limply, lets him. He watches as Kendall touches his lips to each of his knuckles in turn, peppering kisses against James’s joints and fingertips. He murmurs, “Marry me?”

_Oh_.

* * *

 

The day of the wedding, James is sprawled across Kendall’s threadbare blankets, mouthing across his taut abdomen. “You can still back out, you know.”

“Why would I want to do that?” Kendall gasps. He arches against the heat of James’s lips. “It’s you. It’s always been you. It’ll always be you.”

“What will?” James asks, hiding a smile in the sharp line of muscle under Kendall’s left pectoral.

Kendall stiffens all the same. He peers down at James, caging his face between his palms. His eyes burn with sincerity, this pure, green fire. “My heart. My soul. The only thing that matters. It’s all you, James.”

James can’t quite catch his breath. He says, “Always is a long time. What if you live to be a hundred and ten?”

Kendall touches his cheekbones, his temples; runs his thumbs through James’s hair. He replies, “Then I’ll be lucky to have had a hundred years of loving you.”

“Sap.”

“You bring it out in me.”

James can’t help the quick, darting smile that escapes him. “Will the rest of our lives be just like this?”

“Corny?” Kendall asks, his grin turning cheeky.

“Wonderful,” James replies.

He surges up to kiss Kendall, deeply, until Kendall’s breaths become ragged pants and moans. When they break for air, Kendall leans his forehead against James’s and answers, “I think we both deserve some wonderful.”

* * *

 

The ceilings are strung with fragrant flowers and foliage, nothing at all like what would have been seen back home, in District Four.

There, weddings are held at the cusp of the sea, shells and sand squishing between the vibrant couples’ toes.

But this is nice, too.

Camille would like it, James thinks distantly. He’s too caught by the bright light in Kendall’s eyes to finish the thought, or to remember any of the myriad things that are lead beneath his ribcage.

Around them, faces swim and flicker. There is a strange luminescence to the makeshift forest that normally acts as District Thirteen’s canteen. But at the center of it all is Kendall, incandescent. He’s not faking it, play acting or pretending. This is the little boy he met on the beach as a kid, cocksure and sunny, with sea salt on his skin and the most amazing dimples James has ever seen.

It’s the teenager he stole moonshine with after long days of pearl diving, sweet oyster on their tongues and the wood smoke of a bonfire permeating their skin.

It’s the man he’s fucked and fought and loved so deeply that he was sure he’d crack apart. But instead they’re here, together; radiant.

Under a canopy of unfamiliar flowers and even more unfamiliar gazes, Kendall is the only thing that James can see. He doesn’t look away for the whole ceremony, the gentle pressure of Kendall’s hands a steady reminder that they’re here. That they’ve survived.

They’ll love each other forever, even if they live to be a hundred and a ten. James can barely wait until the ceremony ends and he gets to kiss Kendall, the love of his life – his _husband_. It will be the first kiss of the rest of their lives.

The world, until now, has been so beautiful and so terrible.

But James is no longer afraid.

 


End file.
